


Here and Now

by ellorgast



Series: Monster Socks! [4]
Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon
Genre: Canon - Manga, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 13:21:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2311100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellorgast/pseuds/ellorgast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chiba Mamoru went to Harvard and found four friends.  They found him too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The crisp autumn air was alive with the rustling of leaves that were ablaze with fiery orange, the brisk breeze that cut through the sunshine with a suggestion of winter, and with taunts so biting that they would have made a few of the passing squirrels blush had they understood their meaning.

In an otherwise abandoned park behind an empty school, four young men were alternately throwing basketballs and insults, while a fifth sat to the side and offered only the latter. Mamoru had yet to muster the courage to say anything disagreeable about anybody's mother, physical appearance, or sexual fortitude, but he had made a well-timed comment about Neil's inability to hang onto the ball, much to the glee of his teammate Jaden, who was otherwise mouthy enough for the both of them.

Sasha huddled beside the court in a heavy Mass Art hoodie, keeping score in the corner of his page while he sketched bodies in mid-leap. 

"I get it now." Neil idly spun the ball between his broad fingers as he squared himself in front of Mamoru. "All that Japanese politeness is just an act, isn't it? You're damn competitive when you want to be, Chiba."

Mamoru allowed himself only the faintest smirk, because his team was 3 points up and that was almost in gloating territory. Both Kain and Neil had a couple inches on him, and Jaden was dwarfed by them all, but as a team they were uncommonly fast. What they lacked in height, they were making up for in pure movement. What was more, Mamoru was finding that, as much to his own surprise as the others', he was remarkably good at predicting the other players' moves. Something about the way that Neil shifted his weight before he moved, or the way that Kain's jaw twitched when he was on the offensive, seemed to betray their every plan, though he was not entirely sure why, and Jaden, who was so very good at executing a few muttered instructions, was more than happy to defer to Mamoru's instincts. 

Neil, growing grumpy at how he was little more than a lurching troll past which the pair darted like humming birds, was becoming increasingly rough in his plays, nearly knocking Mamoru right off his feet when he "accidentally" body checked him. 

"Foul." Sasha called, without glancing up.

The brunette glared murder. "Bullshit. You weren't even looking."

The blond shaded in a pair of sneakers. "I'm the ref. I call foul. Your ball, Chiba."

Neil grudgingly passed the ball to the Japanese man, his good humor giving way to sore loser-hood. As Mamoru caught it, he tried not to let the gleeful disbelief at his good fortune show too much on his face. He could have been losing abysmally, and he still would have found himself happily stunned to realize that he was no longer the same man who once spent all his waking hours in near-solitude. He, who had sometimes gone days barely speaking to another living body, almost could not remember what it was like not to have such excursions with his newfound friends to look forward to. Now it was movies and video games at their house, visits to more bars in this city than he had ever seen in his lifetime prior, Neil walking him to his class with steaming coffee cups in their hands. Even his early morning jog, when the air was hushed and brittle with frost, was now sometimes accompanied by Kain, who, Neil revealed, rarely invited anybody to tread upon such a meditative time of his day. It was like he had found himself in a dream. A dream where he was a different man, a man who was liked and accepted, and until now he had no idea what he had been missing these past 21 years.

And sometimes, that was almost enough to make him forget to think about the four cold stones locked in his desk drawer. 

He glanced at Jaden, and the blond knew what to do. Five nanoseconds later, the ball was through the net, and Neil had just about had it. He gave them all a detailed explanation of why both Japanese and Americans were the scourge of the Earth, throwing in a few Russians for good measure, and finally concluded by punching the cement wall beside him.

The game was put on hold on account of injury.

"It serves you fucking right," Sasha informed him, when the brunette had stopped bellowing obscenities, this time out of pain instead of indignation. 

"Let me see that." Mamoru tried to reach for the injured hand.

"But it hurts!" Neil whined, cradling it like it was going to fall off.

"I should make sure it's not broken."

"It is broken! I think I broke every bone in my hand."

The other three looked remarkably unconcerned. Jaden fished a bottle of water out of his bag. "I hope it is broken, you overgrown baby. This isn't hockey; we don't throw fucking tantrums in the middle of the game and start beating on random shit because we're down a few points."

"If I can't beat anyone up, then it's not a real sport."

"That means curling is right out."

"You wouldn't say that if you'd gotten hit with a curling rock before. Owww!" Neil whined, as Mamoru attempted to pry his hand out into the open.

"Show the nice med student your hand, Neil," Kain advised him, no trace of amusement detectable on his face, though his voice was just a little too light for the circumstances. "Maybe he'll get to stitch it up and everything."

The Canadian blanched under his brown hair. "No. Let it fall off, I don't care. You can't make me."

"Yes I can."

Mamoru latched onto Kain's statement, because sometimes it seemed like Kain was the only person who could motivate Neil to do anything. "Which would really hurt a lot more than just letting me see it."

Neil weighed his options, and finally seemed to conclude that not even the idea of having his hand stitched together by an untrained med student was more terrifying than Kain. He whimpered as Mamoru took his hand and looked it over. 

Skin contact and a few moments of concentration was all it took to detect most injuries. Mamoru made a show of looking over the scraped knuckles while his other senses traced them more deeply, scanning each tiny bone for evidence of fracture. 

He could feel Kain's eyes on him. "Can you try to move your fingers for me?" Neil whined some more, but did as he was told. Mamoru made him flex his hand a few times and try to grip his own before pronouncing his hand unbroken. "Probably just bruised. You should put some ice on it when you get home."

"Congratulations. You're only a partial fuck-up." Sasha had not once left his chosen sketching spot throughout Neil's latest spectacle.

Neil showed him one of his unbroken fingers.

Jaden picked up the ball. "Well we're not heading home just because of Neil's idiocy. Hey Kain, wanna see if we could both take down Chiba?"

Mamoru looked between them. "You wouldn't."

The blond shrugged. "Desperate times, bro. Somebody's gotta do it."

Mamoru appealed to Kain. "You aren't actually considering this, are you?"

A shrewd look entered his grey eyes as he crossed his arms before him. "What, are you scared to take us up on the challenge?"

Suddenly cornered, Mamoru took the only face-saving measure available to him. "Do you really think you could take the humiliation?"

Jaden grinned. "Oh shit son, I think it's on!"

The game commenced, while Neil stood to the side and heckled everybody, including Sasha. "So is that a person, or some kind of flying walrus?"

"I don't know. Win any fights with brick walls lately?"

"That wall had it coming. Hey Ward, you couldn't outrun my grandma if she gave you a head start!"

Kain sank the ball, turned to the brunette with a comeback ready, and froze in his tracks. Suddenly on alert, Mamoru followed his gaze.

A long shadow fell over the grass beyond the basketball court, stretching behind the wall of the school that Neil had so rudely punched before. It could have been a tree, or a piece of playground equipment just out of sight. But it was moving.

Before he could take a breath to shout, something the size and speed of a small car had crashed headlong into the chain link fence, and Mamoru did not have to guess at what it was. The creature was huge, ferocious, and temporarily distracted by the mysterious metal barrier that had foiled its first strike, and now lay in a tangled heap beneath it. It was red, and terrible. Enormous teeth, thick red mane, tail that arced up with a poisonous stinger on the end. It was some terrible parody of a real animal, but twisted and wrong the way that only a youma could be. In the moment that it spent trying to pull itself up, five men stood frozen.

Mamoru expected them to follow proper civilian protocol in the event of a youma attack and run the hell away from the big scary monster, but apparently they were of the class of people who either panicked too much to save themselves or had some kind of psychotic notion that they could actually take on a creature like that. Mamoru grew weary of those sorts of people. They always needed rescuing.

Except for that little problem of trying to pretend to his newfound friends that he was an average human being, with no supernatural powers whatsoever.

So now here he was. Four people to rescue, and no way of doing it. Running away was sounding better by the second.

Sasha had backed just outside the reach of the monster's enormous paws, but that did not mean it was not going to make a lunge for him any moment. "Sasha! Get away!" His back turned to Mamoru, the wild curls of his copper-blond hair hiding his face, Mamoru could not tell whether it was panic or insanity that made him drop his sketchpad at that moment and turn to face the creature that was rising to tower at full height. What was clear was that either way, he needed to get the heck away, now.

Without thinking, without hearing Kain shout his name, he launched himself at Sasha with all the speed he possessed. He grabbed the grey hood and pulled, flinging the shorter man backward. The blond stumbled into him, spluttering. "What are you doing?"

"You need to move!" Mamoru informed him, since he did not seem to be gathering this very important fact himself. Sasha was much stronger than he looked when he planted himself, though, and would not be shoved back a second time.

The predatory growl behind him reminded Mamoru that the creature had recovered a little too quickly for his liking. With no more time to waste, Mamoru did something that Neil had taught him, and that he had never expected to ever put into action: he body-slammed Sasha right off his feet and turned to place himself between him and the beast.

When the attack came, he expected it to be in the form of claws, or maybe teeth, or perhaps a nondescript ball of raw energy. He did not expect that he would look up just in time to see the scorpion-like stinger lunge lightning-fast at his face. The next thing he knew, he was writhing on the ground, feeling like his eyeballs were dissolving in acid.

Horrible sounds erupted above him. Furious roars, shouts, ground-shaking footsteps. He tried to force his eyes open, but the pale blur of light he managed to snatch was not worth the paralyzing pain. Blind and disoriented, barely able to breathe for the pain, he forced himself onto his elbows and tried to drag himself away from the crazed monster.

Strong hands were pulling him up. "Get up," Kain's voice commanded. "Move!"

Mamoru forced himself to work against his instinctive desire to lay in a paralyzed heap until his entire face stopped feeling like it was being boiled from the inside. He could barely move his legs to get them under him, could barely tell which direction was up, but somehow he struggled to his feet and stumbled in the direction Kain pulled him. 

He had no intention of leaving the battle behind with all of his friends in danger, but he could not have run away even if he wanted to. When his hand felt the cool brick of the school wall, he collapsed weakly against it.

"Can you open your eyes?"

He hoped the half-shake of his head was enough of a response, because moving it again seemed like an awful idea. "Kain, that thing..."

"Quiet. Tilt your head back." He choked back an agonized scream when Kain's fingers roughly forced his eye open and streams of cold water joined the burning pain in his eye sockets. He endured the other eye, because somewhere deep in his medical mind he knew that it was somehow necessary to flush out the venom, and only when Kain had run out of water and released him did he start to feel incrementally better. "Think you can stand? I need to get you out of here."

The metallic crash of more chainlink fence falling made him try to open his eyes again, but no amount of concentrated blinking would render the world into anything more distinct than a blur of foggy colors. "We need to get everyone else away."

"They'll be fine. They can distract it long enough for us to get a safe distance."

Mamoru could not believe what he was hearing. This wasn't a game where they could all keep on pretending to be superstars. "Have you seen it?"

"Yeah, it's a big fucking lion-thing. It's already injured. They can outrun it easily."

He had found himself in many tight spots before, but Mamoru had never realized until this moment how dependent he had been on the other senshi. The normal thing to do in this situation was to sit tight and wait for help. There was always someone else out there ready to come running at the first sign of danger. But there was no one else now. Nobody to call for backup. If he left it, the youma would keep right on rampaging and hurting and maybe killing people. If he did not, then these new friends of his were not going anywhere either. 

But it meant exposing himself, and every compromise of his identity exponentially increased his risk of getting jumped in a dark alley by some mad supervillain. And, somehow almost as frightening, it meant that he could no longer pretend with these new friends, however briefly, that he was anything normal. 

"We're leaving." Kain began to pull him up. 

"No." 

"Why?" Kain's grip on his shoulders was forceful, so much so that Mamoru knew that if he could see, he would be forced to look him in the eye. "If you've got a better idea, then say so." It was as if he could read Mamoru's thoughts. As if he knew exactly what he was debating right then.

The beast bellowed out another ground-shaking roar, and he knew that it was ridiculous to even consider any option other than eliminating it. Mamoru took a breath. "You need to get everyone else away. I won't be able to."

"Because you can't bloody see?"

"No, because I'll be too busy." Without waiting for Kain to ask him what he meant, without letting another second pass by in which his friends foolishly faced down a giant youma alone, he lifted his hand to his eyes, and flooded them with healing power.

It took only a few seconds before he could open them again, and see the gravel beneath him almost as clearly as he used to. He stood without a word and raced back across the blacktop, leaving behind a Kain who, for once, seemed stunned utterly into silence.

The youma had indeed been injured, judging by the limp in its step, but he had no time to wonder how such an event had transpired. Two young men stood well outside the monster's reach, but Jaden was way too close. As if he hoped somebody was filming this for posterity, he kept taunting the creature, running just within its reach, only to leap away from its claws, shouting insults at it as he did so. 

Neil was circling around behind the monster while it distracted itself with pawing at the annoying blond thing, as though he had the crazy notion of doing something that might actually hurt it. If Mamoru could possibly have run any faster to prevent either of them from doing something idiotic, he would have.

In any other context, the grin Jaden wore as he danced out of the youma's reach would have been infectious, the taunts flying out of his mouth almost as fast as his feet could move. "Aw yeah, who's a big scary monster? What is this, The Lion King? What are you gonna do, sing The Circle of Life at me?"

"Jaden!" Mamoru shouted, somehow hoping the single word was enough to make the blond see reason.

He glanced at Mamoru, away from the monster, his smile broad. "Come join the fun, bro! It's like playing with a giant cat!"

The giant cat saw its chance. Stinger flexing, red eyes gleaming, with lightning speed it pounced, and in half a second Jaden had vanished behind the creature's bulk.

The world seemed to slow down. It was like a nightmare, where Mamoru's legs refused to move fast enough, where the ground beneath him warped and stretched out away from him. He could see Neil heaving one of the metal poles that had supported the destroyed chain link fence, and somehow it did not register in his mind that the pole looked oddly sharp on one end before the brunette plunged it into the monster's side. In the moment that it reared its head to give a terrible roar, something like blood seemed to fleck its maw. Then the youma vanished, and all Mamoru could see was Jaden, his throat and shoulder an unrecognizable mess of blood.

Everything stopped. Time, the universe, sound, his breath, and the feet beneath him. At the edge of the blacktop was a face whose grin he could call to his mind in an instant, so close and familiar was it, but it had turned all wrong. Though his throat was torn open, Jaden moved slightly--a twitch of his hand, a frantic heaving of his chest. He was still alive. But just as Mamoru thought this, another truth pushed into his mind. In another moment, another few seconds, he would not be.

There was a roaring in his ears, like a coming earthquake. He only now noticed it, as it crescendoed, began to shake through his entire being. He forced himself to move the last few steps, forced himself to face the bloodied, struggling--no, dying--friend. When he touched him, the world exploded.

_She struck him from behind. That was her way. All who witnessed it would remember it as the moment when Prince Endymion sacrificed himself for Serenity, and he would have done it willingly a hundred times if it would have ensured her life, but when he had jumped in the blade's path, he had no illusions that she would survive much longer than himself._

_Cries mingled with the princess's scream, and as he crumpled to the ground, he knew that his desperate plan had had its effect. He struggled to look up into the faces that hovered above him, dirtied and bloodied with battle, and eyes that had been clouded for so many days with a hatred not their own seemed to see him for the first time. The pain was giving way to terrifying cold, but still he managed something almost like a smile. "There you are. I've missed you so..."_

_A weight came crashing down upon his back. The woman who had brought down worlds in her jealous love for him had the audacity to brace her foot against his broken body to remove her blade, and he no longer had the strength not to scream from the pain. A purple gown slithered into his line of sight, and for one horrible moment, he feared that the witch had him at last, that the final seconds of his life would be possessed by her, and he would leave this life with her taint clutching at his soul._

_"DON'T YOU TOUCH HIM!" Shouted Jadeite, who always acted first and thought later, who moved faster than a raging river even when he knew a deadly trap lay open before him. He never hesitated to challenge the witch, just as she never hesitated to dispatch him just as quickly. Her enchanted sword was still slick with the prince's blood when it slid as easily into his chest as if his bones were made of water._

_The body dropped, awkward and undignified. Blood everywhere, his and Jadeite's, and the storm-blue eyes stared at him, vacant glass orbs that would remain still forever._

_They would be the last thing he saw in that life._

 

Light and color and that incessant roar threatening to shake his bones apart. Jaden's name repeating itself in his head like a Gregorian chant, like a holy mantra, was the only thing keeping him from screaming or fainting, or both.

From somewhere within the storm, a steady voice somehow penetrated the din. "Calm down. Calm down and focus."

A similar statement pushed itself to the forefront of his mind. Calm down, and don't panic. You'll never heal anybody if you lose your head, my prince. With no time to consider the source of that memory, Mamoru forced himself to reign in his power, to think about the wounds immediately in front of him and not about the friend he might lose because of them. Slowly, reluctantly, the golden light around him dimmed, flowing into Jaden instead of everywhere. 

Now that he had a proper grip on it, he focused all of his powers on closing those wounds, on feeling the skin rapidly mend itself layer by layer beneath his fingers. His pulse roared in his ears, pounding in time with Jaden's. He was the gateway, and his power was a river flooding through him.

Faintly, as if from a great distance, he heard a voice talking to him insistently. But he couldn't rest, not when his friend, the friend he so needed, could be lost without him. The wounds were quite shallow now. They were only cuts. They were closing. They were an old scar. They were no scar at all.

His healing power slowed to a trickle of its own accord, and the noise died in his ears. That same voice was speaking again, reaching his ears slowly as if it traveled through water. "He's okay now. You can stop. He's okay."

Mamoru opened his eyes to see the intact skin beneath the bloodied shreds of Jaden's shirt, and at last he allowed his power to stop flowing completely. The golden light around his hands faded, leaving him feeling cold and hollowed out, and shakily his fingers fumbled through the tattered fabric for a pulse. Strong hands closed around his shoulders. That same reassuring voice was close by his ear. "Mamoru, you don't have--"

"I need to know," he mumbled. But suddenly Jaden's body was shaking with coughs, and Mamoru barely had time to articulate the words "help him" before Neil had rolled him on his side to cough up the last of the blood in his newly-repaired throat. 

"He'll be okay once he can breathe again, right?" Sasha stood apart from them, looking almost as pale as his fellow blond.

Mamoru nodded--or he thought he nodded, or at least, vaguely considered nodding--but his eyes were on Jaden, retching on the pavement, bright red blood bubbling up to his lips. Exactly like his vision of Jadeite, the blood spilling from the corner of his mouth, that hollow blue eye...

He had never been sickened by the sight of blood, but now Mamoru wavered to his feet, stumbled across the pavement, and got sick in the bushes behind the school.

He did not notice that Kain had followed until he felt a steadying hand on his arm. "Alright, mate?"

Mamoru leaned against the concrete wall of the school, though he had a strange impulse to lean against Kain instead. He had always wished for memories of his Shitennou. Now he had gotten his wish.


	2. Chapter 2

Kain wrapped an arm around Mamoru--his prince--feeling him shiver through his sweaty shirt. This was Endymion that he was holding. Endymion, spent of his power, needing his guardians to promise him right at this moment that they would never leave his side, that they would support him always--

Mamoru took a shuddering breath as they crossed the basketball court back to the three huddled on the ground, and Kain studied him with concern. He looked ill, shaken--this couldn't just be the exhaustion of using his power. He had gone wildly overboard with it and nearly lost control, but was that enough to leave him in such condition? But then, it was panic that made him lose control to begin with, and maybe the near loss of Jaden had hit him harder than Kain expected.

In the few seconds after Mamoru had healed his eyes, the world had seemed to drop from under Kain's feet. He knew that power emanating from Mamoru's hands, knew it with unwavering certainty, because it was the very same power toward which he desperately clawed his way every time it summoned him to his stone, and he would crawl on his knees across broken glass for a glimpse of that power again. He knew now, though he had hesitated to believe it before, that those royal blue eyes were the same ones he had dared to glimpse once, in the heart of the blazing light. 

It was only a few seconds that he spent unable to move for shock, watching his prince's retreating back, but they were a vital few seconds. So much might have been lost if he had not forced himself into action. The very idea that Jaden might have died before meeting the prince he had so long waited for was too much to contemplate.

He quickly surveyed the others, taking stock. Jaden had collapsed onto the balled up Mass Art hoodie, gulping in breaths with his eyes closed. Sasha clutched at his hand, paper-white beneath his freckles. Neil was gaping silently at Mamoru, as if seeing him for the first time. Kain tightened his hold on his newfound prince and knew: now was not the time for their reunion. 

He lifted a hand and slid it through Mamoru's bangs, felt the cold, clammy skin beneath. "You're in shock," he told him softly. "Neil, get the car."

The brunette's gaze finally left Mamoru to stare at Kain as though he had ordered him to grow a second head. Why, when their prince--their Prince--was with them, when everything could be revealed and teleporting was so much faster anyway, was he suggesting that they travel home by car? Before he could recover his voice to express this, Kain gave him a silencing look. "Go."

***

It would later be almost a mystery to Mamoru how he ended up huddled on his friends' couch, with Sasha pushing a warm mug into his hands. The world was slowly righting itself around him, but somehow none of it seemed to fit anymore. The Jolly Roger flag on the wall, the silver in Sasha's lip ring, the brightly colored DVDs stacked on the low table by his knee. How could any such things exist in a world where the most important people in his life had been bloodily and brutally murdered before his eyes? When it had almost happened again, and surely would happen again, to these new friends who he had always thought were too good to be true? He was a danger to them, just as he had always been a danger to those who mattered most, and he had been a fool to pretend otherwise. He took a sip of the tea that Sasha had made him, feeling sick with the knowledge that it was served by someone who he had endangered.

Kain and Neil emerged from Jaden's room. Neil looked furious, as anybody would when their best friend had nearly been killed. Mamoru half-expected him to start shouting at himself, but for some unfathomable reason, the person he was scowling at was Kain.

"How is he?" Sasha asked. He, too, had looked shaken by Jaden's close call, and Mamoru saw now how much was hidden behind their constant bickering.

Kain looked like the only steady person in the room. "He's fine. He woke up briefly and sounded quite coherent. He asked me to tell you not to carry on like a little girl just because he got a bit scratched up."

Such a statement would normally earn a few laughs and a crude remark from Sasha, but nobody was laughing now. 

Mamoru stared into his mug, bracing himself for what he was certain was coming. The questions. The accusations. He had never revealed himself to someone like this before, not to somebody who knew nothing about senshi. Usagi had discovered him, but she had grown to know him so well under both identities that the merging of the two seemed to be a natural transition for her. Asanuma had caught him using his powers once, but it was Makoto who dealt with the fallout of that, and by the time Motoki worked anything out, he had long been aware of the girls keeping a base under his own arcade. It was not just fighting monsters. His healing powers had been a secret he carried since he was a child, something that he never dared share with other children or the adults who drifted in and out of his life. He had grown so used to fearing the reaction he would receive if anybody ever discovered him that he took it for granted that fear and hatred were the only responses he could expect.

He held his breath, waiting for the blow to strike, but the only question that came was, "How are you feeling?"

So startled was he by the question that Mamoru blurted out something resembling the word "fine" without thinking. He looked up at Kain, who was watching him with concern. He shifted uncomfortably under his silver gaze, taking another sip of his tea to avoid meeting his eyes. 

Mamoru dared to glance up at Neil again, and felt his insides twist to see his face turned resignedly away, as if he could not bare to look at him. His normally jovial friend's--maybe former friend's--silence stung worse than any shouting might have done.

Kain seemed to be the only one able to speak. "Do you want to lie down? My room is quiet, you could get some rest."

He could not imagine trying to sleep with the horrible memories still prickling in his mind, and the guilt twisting at the base of his stomach. Mamoru swallowed around the lump in his throat. "No, I... I should be getting home." He sloshed the nearly-full mug on the table as he set it down beside all the other stained rings of beverages past.

"Are you sure? You can stay, you know." It was touching that Sasha did not object to his presence either, but Mamoru felt no more able to sleep only a room away from Jaden's unconscious form than launch himself to the moon. Nor could he endure Neil's stormy silence any longer.

He rose to his feet. "I'm sure, I really--I have to finish that report, and--" He trailed off, looking vaguely for his jacket, realized he hadn't brought one, and started awkwardly for the door.

Kain was beside him long before he made it. "I'll drive you."

"I can just..."

The hand at his elbow was firm. The keys were in Kain's hand. "The busses aren't great on Sundays. I should really drive you."

As he was escorted from the house, Mamoru did not have the courage to look back and see the contained storm with brunette hair who could look at anything except his retreating back.

The world drifted past the car windows, too bright for Mamoru's mood. It was hard to believe, as he fisted his hand around the edge of the seat, staring resignedly forward, that the day had started so carefree.

"Will we still see you tomorrow?"

Mamoru had forgotten all about being invited to their house the next day. They were going to drink beer and watch awful horror movies. His knuckles whitened a bit on the edge of the seat. "Do you want to?"

Kain glanced at him. "Why wouldn't we?" Mamoru had no answer to that. He thought of Jaden's pale face still streaked with blood as they carried him in the house, of the unfamiliar sharpness in Neil's chocolate brown eyes. "Jaden's going to be fine. You probably saved his life."

He stared hard at the road. "It shouldn't have happened in the first place."

"That's not your fault." Kain seemed so calm, even in light of what had happened. He was not panicking or accusing Mamoru. He had not even asked him yet what had happened. 

"Aren't you..." he swallowed, seemingly having more difficulty talking than normally, "aren't you going to ask about what happened?"

"Do you want me to?"

Mamoru looked up at him. For no reason he could explain, he felt safe being honest with Kain. "Not really."

"Then you can talk about it in your own time." A small tinge of relief eased the tightness in his chest. "You're exhausted. You should go home and rest."

"Yeah." Surreptitiously, Mamoru released his grip on the seat. "Um, thank you."

"Thank you for saving Jaden. Even when it was a risk. Even when there was no reason to think you had to."

Had he been more awake and less distracted, Mamoru might have found something odd in Kain's wording. Instead he muttered an embarrassed you're welcome, feeling as much as ever that he had done Jaden more harm than good. But it felt good to be comforted, even just a little, when he was so prepared to be abandoned. He almost felt like he could confide in Kain, almost felt like he could tell him his worries and fears and what he had remembered when he saw Jaden's brutalized body.

But it wasn't Kain's counsel that he wanted. He wanted the people who he had lost so many times, not just in the distant past, but again when they were defeated under Beryl, before he knew them, and once again, when their souls had vanished from their stones like candles flickering out. He hungered desperately for their voices now, as if the sound of them saying his name could somehow erase the memory of their bodies falling, broken, to the ground. 

When he reached the door of his dorm room, his hands shook so much that his keys slipped from his fingers and clattered to the floor. Kain, who had insisted on walking him to his room, picked them up. "Which one?"

"The silver one," he muttered, hating how foolish he felt in front of a witness. Kain acted like there was nothing unusual about him unlocking and opening Mamoru's door on his behalf, though, and that made it a little easier to bear.

Kain paused on the threshold, his eyes dark grey like clouds heavy with snow. "Do you want me to stay?"

A part of Mamoru wanted to say yes, and that surprised him. He had grown better about allowing Usagi to visit him on the rare occasion that he was sick, in the wake of the disaster that had been Nehellenia's curse. But that did not mean he was not resistant to the idea of someone seeing him at such weak moments, of his being dependent on their kindness, and this desire not to be alone at such a time was new to him. For some reason that he could not quite explain, he did not want Kain to leave.

"No. Thank you. I'll be alright." Mamoru looked up into those stormy grey eyes and felt that he convinced no one. But there was something he had to do, or try to do, and he needed to be alone to do it.

A warm hand squeezed his arm. "You can call me for anything. I mean that."

"Thank you. Um..."

"Come see us tomorrow. When you're feeling better."

He had not meant, or hoped, to see them again. Everything about what happened to Jaden seemed to spell the end of whatever friendship he had with these people. But Kain made everything seem so much less dire, and he found that he could not say no to him. "I will."

***

Restraining himself from tackling Mamoru to the floor and proclaiming his undying allegiance must have taken every ounce of self-control that Neil possessed, such that it collapsed into a mighty explosion of expletives the moment that Kain had stepped through the door. The white-haired man calmly poured himself a glass of orange juice, while the house rumbled on its foundations with shouts that insulted everything from his mother to his taste in shoes. He sat down at the kitchen table, sipped at his orange juice, and waited for Neil to shout himself silent. It took half an hour.

"Are you even listening to me?" Neil was looming over the table, all muscles and sweat and dark furious eyes, looking like he wanted to flip the table over and start punching Kain in the face. He may have, had Kain been anybody else.

"Of course." Kain leaned one elbow on the arm of his chair, tilted his head against his hand. He idly rolled his glass in the other hand. "That was a most colorful combination. I particularly enjoyed how you compared my drumming ability to under-ball sweat and threatened to pee on my bonsai."

"I fucking will! And to summarize, Kain, you're a big fat asshole and your haircut makes you look like a Swedish porn star."

"I see." Kain set down his empty glass. "Well given today's events, I am going to assume that you are simply lashing out, out of fear for Jaden and trepidation over meeting Endymion, and forget everything you said to me just now. I suggest you do the same, particularly the part about urinating on my tree."

Neil stared at him, weighing his options. He had clearly not expected to call his leader a hairy cunt without repercussion. The let-down of his words not having any impact whatsoever on Kain was measured against the temporary free pass of pretending it never happened. He groaned, running his hands down his face. "I really hate you sometimes."

Kain pulled out a chair for him. Neil sank into it, his broad muscular frame looking deflated. He took a long breath. "Explain this to me. You do have a reason, right? You don't do shit like not letting me tell our long-lost prince that we are his newly-resurrected guardians, here to serve him forever, without a reason. I mean," Neil looked up at him, "you organize your sock drawer. You don't do anything without a plan."

"I thought it was obvious. Did you really want your reunion with Prince Endymion to happen when he was nearly incoherent with shock? Jaden unconscious on the ground? Is that really how you pictured things going?"

"It's still cruel, man. It's like telling a kid on Christmas morning that he can look at his presents all he wants, but he won't get to open them until Boxing Day. You cancelled Christmas, Kain."

"Boxing Day isn't a real day." Sasha wandered past them to the fridge and fished out the orange juice. 

"It is in every country that matters."

"It's not. You don't do anything special for it, you just sit around eating leftovers or shop at outrageous sales. Like in every country that doesn't call it Boxing Day."

"I got the entire M.A.S.H. box set for $80 on Boxing Day. That makes it a holiday for me."

"Was that in Canadian? That must mean you got it for the same price as a few American nickels and a handful of beans. That is a steal."

Neil glared at Sasha as he slid into a chair across from him. "Your face is worth a few nickels and a handful of beans."

Sasha's green eyes sparkled over the rim of his glass. "That's not what your mom said last night." Before Neil could rally a counterattack, he turned to Kain. "So when are we planning to tell him?" 

He looked between them. "That's not entirely up to me, is it? When do you think we should tell him?"

"Right now," Neil shot out.

"Other than that."

"When Jaden's awake," Sasha said emphatically, setting his glass down. "He'd kill us if we let him miss this."

Kain nodded. "I asked him to come see us tomorrow. Jaden should have recovered by then."

Neil looked slightly defeated. "That's like, 24 whole hours from now! Okay, fine. Since we have to wait around anyway, then we're making it a proper celebration. With booze. And real food."

"What," said Sasha, "you mean you weren't going to just break into the stash of instant ramen and cheap beer for this?"

"No, we need it extra classy. Crack open a few boxes of Kraft Dinner. You have to add milk to that and everything."

"You mean Macaroni and Cheese." 

"No, there is no macaroni or cheese in those boxes, you pseudo-American. But your cheese all tastes like plastic anyway, so I guess you never figured out the difference."

"You say that like you don't eat more processed food than the rest of us combined."

As their argument devolved into a dispute over whose mother was larger, Kain stood and left the kitchen. He paused by Jaden's door. His reclining form did not stir as Kain's shadow fell over it, soft snores sounding in the darkness. Mamoru--Endymion--had healed him completely, but there was still the blood loss, and the trauma, to account for. They always seemed to forget that part in the past, when he caught them doing all manner of ridiculous stunts--Jadeite climbing all over the castle walls like a monkey, Nephrite jumping into freezing water on a dare--acting more recklessly than they may have if they did not think Endymion could cure any and all ailments.

Had he made the right call today? After two lifetimes of mistakes and two years of waiting, he was moving as cautiously as a slug on a salt shaker. He wanted everything to be perfect for Endymion, and maybe that was too much to ask of the world, because when he had left him standing alone in his dorm, he had looked as hurt and lost as a child without its parents. He had almost dropped all pretenses there, but it was Mamoru who wanted time alone, and maybe he deserved some space after what happened.

It was not like Kain to be uncertain like this. But as he should have remembered, where Endymion was concerned, he would always be just a little bit lost.


	3. Chapter 3

The familiar call did not reach him until hours later. As he sat gazing at his little white Japanese pine bonsai (he had not trusted Neil's threat to be entirely empty, and covertly moved it into the safety of his bedroom), he felt the warm tickle at the back of his mind that he had thought was lost to him forever.

A day ago, even a few hours ago, he would have been overjoyed to feel his prince's call. But now he knew exactly who and where his prince was, knew a little more of the context, and he was concerned. Why, after so many months of silence, could he suddenly sense it again? And why now?

He thought of the state in which he had left Mamoru. Emotionally and physically exhausted. Shocked. Frightened. It was not unreasonable for him to turn to his lost guardians at this time, as he once did whenever he needed council. But calling them now, as the realm of the living world pulled them further and further from their former vessels, must have required a great deal of energy on his part. More than he should have been exerting after such an ordeal.

His last attempt at answering Endymion's call had been disastrous. He had thought that nothing could keep him from his prince, but the threat of never meeting him in the flesh instead of as a ghost in a rock eventually made even Kain resist answering. Soon after, the call stopped coming, and he did not know whether to be relieved that the option was taken out of his hands or saddened that his last tenuous connection with his prince had been lost.

Kain had made a promise not to use his stone again. It was a promise requested in earnest, from friends who saw he had reached his limit and did not want to know what would happen if he passed that limit. He had no intention of breaking it. But now, he also had no intention of ignoring Endymion's--Mamoru's--call. He had summoned Kunzite. Kunzite he would have.

Teleporting into another person's residence was once considered the very height of rudeness. Doing it now, when others knew nothing of the skill, was additionally both awkward and dangerous, risking jumping into a situation that was uncomfortable for all parties involved. But tonight was not a night for protocol, not even for Kain. With a final glance at his bonsai, he jumped.

The call. The summons from his prince, only a faint tickle in the back of his mind before he teleported, exploded suddenly against the walls of his skull. It had been a welcome, even pleasant sensation. Now it tore at the sinews of his brain. Kain had barely registered the new floor beneath his feet before he collapsed in blinding pain, white-gold light burning at every one of his senses. Endymion was calling him, with all the power that it took to summon Kunzite’s soul from across the world, from across dimensions, from out of the afterlife. But his soul was no longer a distant echo floating in darkness, nor was it thousands of miles away. It was here, in Mamoru’s room, and the sheer force of Endymion’s will was going to rip it from his guardian’s skull to his stone whether Kain wanted him to or not.

He couldn’t breathe. He had stopped breathing, last time, the time when it got too scary and he woke up with paramedics snapping orders over his head. Sending his soul across the ocean, all that tearing it out and shoving it back in again, had been signalling to his body that he did not really need to be alive anymore. He didn’t need to keep breathing, not if his soul was safely tucked back in the delicately cut stone that bore his name. 

But that was not how it was supposed to happen. He had made the choice to come back to this life, despite all the demons he had to face and despite how much it hurt to keep breathing sometimes, because he had a duty to fulfill. Blind, choking, Kain dragged himself across the floor, toward the source of the pounding in his head. He groped desperately over the carpet, fighting against the fear and panic as his fingertips turned numb. 

Rough carpet was interrupted by soft denim. Roughly, he fumbled for the cuff of a pant leg, tugging as hard as his quickly-weakening arm would allow. His hand clasped around a warm ankle, and desperately he hoped that the skin contact would be enough for Endymion to sense his presence. I’m here! He screamed voicelessly. My prince, I’m here!

Darkness flooded his vision so fast that Kain was certain he was losing consciousness. His chest was on fire, and it took him a moment to realize that it was because he was desperately sucking in air. He lay on his back, his chest heaving, spots popping before his eyes. Slowly, he recognized that there was a ceiling above him; that he was seeing through the ordinary darkness of night. The tidal wave of power that had been rolling over him had slowed to a trickle.

He had not let go. Still coughing, every breath feeling like sandpaper in his lungs, Kain rolled over and pushed himself up on his knees. Mamoru lay on his side, clutching something close to his chest. Kain scrambled to him. “What are you doing? I told you to rest!” His eyes were blue slits beneath dark lashes, gazing into some unseen distance. Kain tried to force his voice to speak above a hoarse whisper. “Mamoru, wake up. You need to stop.” He shook him roughly, to no response.

He did not need to see what was so tightly clenched in his prince’s fist. The pink stone, once his prison, then his final connection with Endymion, was still faintly calling him. Enticing his soul to join with it again, to abandon his physical form and live as a ghost haunting his prince’s life. He could pry the piece of kunzite from his fingers, but would that hurt Mamoru? Would it kill Kain? Did he care?

The prince’s lips were moving. Whispering a secret name. Kain’s hand closed over his. “I’m here, Endymion. Do you hear me? I’m right here.”

Blue eyes flickered. Searching. Kain pulled him onto his back, pressed a palm to his cheek to tilt his head up. “Look at me. Do you see me? I’m here, my prince.”

His eyes were glassy and unfocused as he blinked up at his guardian. How much energy had he poured into that little stone before Kain heard him? “...Kunzite?”

“I’m here.” Kain squeezed his hand, despite the sharp pull of the stone closed inside it. “You can stop calling now.”

“I... I needed to... tell you...”

“Give me this, please. You can stop calling.”

“...can’t go...”

“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay right here beside you.” Spots were still dancing before Kain’s eyes as he took a steadying breath and willed his elbows and knees to continue to hold him up off the floor. “I’m not leaving you, Endymion. Do you hear me? Not ever.”

Just as suddenly as it had begun, the tugging of his prince’s call began to fade. Mamoru’s hand fell limp on his chest, and Kain carefully retrieved the stone from between his fingers. “You don’t need this anymore. You can rest, now.”

Mamoru squinted up at him, fighting to stay conscious even as his words dissolved into a barely-comprehensible mumble. “...lot of things... didn’t... different... I should...” He trailed off, eyes disappearing behind thick black lashes.

Kain sank to the floor beside him, taking deep breaths, waiting for the floor to stop swaying beneath him. A soul transference to speak to his prince had always left him feeling weak and nauseous and like his head was going to split in half, even before it went from uncomfortable to dangerous to try it. Even the close brush with it now left him feeling shakier than he would dare reveal in view of his prince... even a prince who was not entirely lucid at the time.

He lay for a long time, watching the rise and fall of Endymion’s chest. Memorizing the new face he wore in this life. The way his hair fell messily over his eyes, contrary to the rigidly short style it had been kept in the past. He had not yet allowed himself to feel anything at his return. A lifetime was a long time to wait for one man. Maybe it would be another lifetime before he knew how to do anything else.

He squeezed the stone in his hand, still warm from Endymion’s. “I told you, on that last day that you called me, not to call anymore. That the next time we saw each other, everything would change. You didn’t listen to that, did you?”

His other hand was close to Endymion’s. Just centimeters from touching. Something held him back from closing the distance. “My stubborn prince. You never listen.”

***

The pleasantly lit room emerged from darkness and the smell of cold metal as the breastplate slid over his head. It had a familiar weight, alerting his senses to be battle-ready. But there was no battle impending, not unless he failed spectacularly at his task. Only the dreary negotiations of inter-kingdom economics. That the formal dress of his kingdom was synonymous with battle clothing was telling.

“Do you think they will accept me?”

Kunzite fastened his breastplate snugly into place. “Venusians are famously lax in their etiquette, but refusing the Queen’s heir when he speaks on her behalf would be a breach not even they could cross. They may, in fact, consider it an advantage to deal with you in place of your mother.” Kunzite began fixing his left pauldron in place. Beastly shoulder guards that made him look much larger in stature. In the mirror, he could see intricately etched silver, the way it glinted the same as Kunzite’s hair.

“Why would they? It is no secret that this will be my first time negotiating in my mother’s place. Will they not see that as an insult, to be treated as my first trial?”

Kunzite tightened the second pauldron on his shoulder. “The followers of Aphrodite consider themselves a progressive people. They wish to move beyond what they consider archaic ways of doing things. They may view your involvement as a means of achieving this. Your youth could be an asset in this visit.”

Endymion fidgeted with the cuffs of his uniform. It was not like him to show his nervousness--it had long been trained out of him--but he knew very well what a renewed alliance with Venus would mean for the future of his kingdom. The first step toward forming ties with the other planets. The first step toward building up the kingdom that would one day be his into something greater. He was going in with much to prove--to his own people as much as to the people of Venus.

Kunzite picked up his sword belt, forcing him to leave the cuffs alone while he lifted his arms out of the way. His guardian’s arms wound easily around his waist, unlike the servant boys he was sometimes sent to dress him for battle. Kunzite stood before him as he tightened the leather to the appropriate notch, still towering over him despite how many inches Endymion had grown in the previous year. He glanced up, a glint of silver eyes behind silver hair, and his stern face softened slightly. “You know this. You have prepared extensively. This is no different from a test in the classroom.”

“I know.” He stared at Kunzite’s shoulder, the way the earth-brown cape folded over his uniform, as anxiety balled in his gut.

“Just remember your training. And--try not to stare.”

The prince laughed suddenly, remembering a particular book that Nephrite had acquired through mysterious means. “I am already familiar with the Venusian way of dressing.”

Kunzite’s eyes sparkled. “I suspected as much. Do your best not to relate anything that Nephrite may have impressed upon you. I don’t think it would be enough to start a war, but all the same, it would not befit your position to get yourself slapped on the first meeting.”

He was still laughing when the door to the chamber opened, and the voice of the steward called him. “Your highness--they are ready for you.”

His features settled into an impassive mask, honed through years of practice, as he stood before the doorway.

Kunzite’s hand brushed the inside of his elbow, reminding him that he stood just behind him. “I am still here,” he said softly. “You will not be in there alone. Remember that.”

***

Something jolted him awake, though he felt like he had just emerged from a very deep sleep. The dream still clung to his mind as he tried to make sense of the ceiling above him, and why it seemed to be aligned wrong. Then he remembered that he was in a small freshman dorm at Harvard, instead of an airy Tokyo penthouse. And certainly not... wherever that place in his dream was. What a vivid dream that had been, too. He had known the names of things he had no business knowing about, had remembered details about a life and a world that had never granted him access before. Even the easy, uncomplicated way that he spoke to--

“Kunzite?” Mamoru sat up in alarm, trying to clear the fog from his head. In a chair at the foot of his bed, a figure reclined by the window, moonlight glinting in his silver hair. His face was exactly how he had dreamed, exactly how he remembered from the greatly missed conversations with the phantom who used to emerge from his stone. 

But now the figure turned, and the vision cleared, and Mamoru saw that it was not his guardian at all. He was too ordinary. Too real. “...Kain?”

“Feeling better?” He asked, in Kiwi-accented English, instead of the deep-voiced Japanese that Kunzite’s ghost had always used.

Mamoru rubbed his eyes, trying to shake off the sleep and confusion and the feeling that something was not quite right. “What are you doing here? I thought... didn’t you go home?”

“I came to check on you. You weren’t answering your cell.”

Something about this situation did not feel right. But Kain had never seemed like a threat to him, not from the moment they had met. Something made him dearly want to trust him, if for no reason other than because he was miles and lifetimes away from everybody he had trusted in the past.

And how did he get in, anyway? Mamoru tried to remember whether Kain had given back his keys after opening the door for him. 

Once he had brushed Kain’s arm with his hand. Just in passing, not with any intent in mind. Normally he would have expected some kind of feedback--a breath of emotion, a half-finished sketch of his thoughts, even colors or snatches of music. Normal people triggered his psychometry as readily as they demonstrated their emotion on their faces. But Kain gave him nothing. Radio static. He might as well have been a ghost. At the time, Mamoru had dismissed the incident--after all, psychometry could be unreliable sometimes. He did not know why he thought of that now.

Kain had gone back to staring out the window. He seemed distracted, somehow. He was rolling something around in his fingers. Something Mamoru could not see. “Is... something wrong?”

“It wasn’t the first attack, was it?” 

“I... what?”

“That monster. It wasn’t the first one.” He glanced again at Mamoru, who was at a loss for a response. Kain returned to the window. “They must swarm on you like flies. I’m sure you wouldn’t have noticed, not until you moved out of Tokyo.” He flipped the object easily between his fingers, his drummer’s hand carelessly in control of its movement. “They don’t normally take form. They are normally just scavengers, feeding off of whatever excess energy they can find. But then you come along, and maybe they just feel threatened.”

Ice began to clench around Mamoru’s gut. Hadn’t it seemed strange that Kain accepted his powers so easily? Hadn’t it always seemed like Kain knew something secret? 

“That attack, it shouldn’t have happened. We should have been watching for it. But you went and made me doubt my judgement, because you’re so much better at hiding yourself than I gave you credit for. Even when it attacked, I thought that it couldn’t have been after you. It could have seriously hurt you when you went running in without using your powers, but you didn’t even flinch. You wouldn’t have revealed yourself at all unless you thought others were in danger, would you? How long were you planning on letting your eyes burn?”

Mamoru’s voice was barely a croak. “Until you weren’t paying attention.”

Kain’s mouth twitched. “I thought so. You’re that stubborn.”

If the white-haired man, whoever he was--whatever he was--who seemed to know so much more than he should have, had wanted to hurt Mamoru, he already had ample opportunity, but that did not stop Mamoru from mapping out an escape route. Kain had the window blocked, but the door was not too far, and Mamoru was fast. He watched the door in his peripheral vision as he studied Kain’s movements and the rhythmic way that he rolled the small object between his fingers. 

“Kain? Who are you?”

Kain looked at him, the light from the window glinting in one eye. “I think you know, on some level. I think you figured out from the moment you met us. But it’s scary, isn’t it? Because what if you’re wrong?”

Mamoru’s voice was barely a whisper. The walls of his too-small room felt like they were pressing in, closer than ever. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You just don’t want to be disappointed again. Do you?”

He wanted to bolt for the door. Just get up and run, no matter how irrational it seemed. Kain knew too much. About him, about everything. Nobody slipped so easily past Mamoru’s defenses. 

Kain seemed to sense his alarm. The object in his hand stopped moving. Mamoru wished he could see his face more clearly through the darkness, but Kain had always been nearly unreadable to him, even in the light. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

Slowly, as if he was approaching a startled animal, Kain rose from the chair and approached Mamoru’s side. Kneeling beside the bed, he took Mamoru’s hand in his strong grip, and pushed the object into his palm.

For a moment, he did not know why it felt so achingly familiar. The glassy surface that always felt a bit cool to the touch, the sharp edges pressing against his skin. But then he felt the faint power coiled inside. The breath of chill air raising goosebumps on his skin. The smell of ice. That sliver of power had grown so faint in recent months, he had almost forgotten the feel of Arctic air settling around him, comfortingly dark and silent, whenever he held the piece of kunzite.

But now, he could sense it stronger than ever. Growing. A puff of his breath billowed in the faint beam from the streetlights outside for only a moment, before the window vanished behind a curtain of shadow. In the darkness, snowflakes as soft as fingerprints alighted on his skin. Mamoru heard his breath shake, but not from the cold. This power was not from the stone he held clenched in his palm. It was from the hand that still wrapped around his.

Kain’s voice emerged from the blackness. “For every time I did not answer when you called. For every day I was not there. For every betrayal. I’m sorry.”

Mamoru never shed a tear in the presence of anyone. But under the curtain of darkness, where he could see nothing, only feel the whisper of ice crystals on his skin, he felt safe.


	4. Chapter 4

When the shock had passed, when the sting of regrets and apologies had begun to fade, when they could look one another in the eye without fearing a loss of composure, they spoke. Haltingly, at first. Mamoru, who had kept an ongoing mental list of all the things he would ask his guardian upon meeting him, finding himself unable to remember the contents of it. Kain, who had long steeled himself for this day, as much at a loss for words as if it had taken him by surprise. But slowly, the words came. Mamoru avoided the biggest questions. How? When? Why? He could hardly believe that the guardian who sat across from him was more than a wonderful illusion that, if questioned too much, might vanish completely.

But he did not vanish. Not when he confirmed his real name, his true name. Not when he said Mamoru's. He was alive. He spoke English. His pale eyebrows knitted with thought when he spoke, and sometimes his fingers drummed on his knee when he fell to silence. Sometimes when he smiled, and almost laughed (actual laughter did not seem to come often) his left eye twitched, just a bit, like it was considering winking. Details that were so much more than Mamoru had ever dreamed, painting over his sketchy imaginings of what it would be like if, just once, he found himself face-to-face with Kunzite. 

Mamoru found himself laughing nervously. "I'm sorry, I--don't even know what to say."

"Then let me go first. Why don't you tell me what happened today. Why did you lose control?"

His stomach twisted uncomfortably. Too personal. But being a flesh-and-blood education student who Mamoru had only met a few weeks ago did not make Kain any less the guardian he had always confided in, even if he no longer appeared in the form of a rock on his desk. He took a breath, studying the comforter piled around his knees instead of those steel grey eyes that watched him so calmly. "When Jaden got hurt, I remembered something. From the past. It's been... well, years since I remembered something new. It was... awful."

Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Kain's hand tighten on the arm of the chair. "The attack on the Moon?"

"Not all of it. Just when Jadeite..." He swallowed around a growing lump in his throat. 

The silence stretched out, two heartbeats too long, and Mamoru stole a glance up at Kain. The guardian was staring out the window again, his eyes glistening slivers of ice. "I never knew whether you were still--alive--" he ground the word out, as though it had lodged in his throat, "to see it happen. By the time we got to you..."

"He still saved me."

"Yes. He did."

Mamoru turned to the window as well. Outside, the oak trees swayed and rustled in the wind, silhouetted against a sky that was slowly taking on a paler shade of black. Dawn was only a few hours off. "He's Jadeite, isn't he? Jaden?"

An unexpected chuckle, still rough with bitterness, sounded beside him. "Is he ever."

The comment brought a smile to Mamoru's lips. Of course he was. Jadeite, the trickster, the illusionist, who had quick feet and a quicker tongue. Was it only this morning, or was it years ago, that they had run side-by-side on the court together, like a wild rushing current to break through the cracks in their friends' defenses? He'd felt it then, the power that resonated between them, even if he had not noticed or admitted it to himself.

Just as he'd sensed the power in his opponents, and knew instinctively how to break through their defenses. Knew that Kain was a fortress unto himself who had to be carefully skirted instead of faced head-on. Knew that Neil was ferocious and deadly when challenged, but all too imprecise when goaded into a rage. Knew that he could trust Sasha's judgement even when he seemed not to be watching, because his eyes traced the details and the patterns of their movements as elegantly as any painting.

Kain was right. In some ways, deep in his subconscious, he had known from the moment that he sat down across from Neil in that library, and found comfort in his presence, that these men were more than new acquaintances. Something about them had called out to him, just as, he realized, he had always been calling out to them. And finally, they heard.

He shifted hesitantly. "Will you... tell me about them?"

His guardian smiled. "I will tell you everything you wish to know."

***

The night passed in what felt like a few breaths, and Kain watched as the pink light before dawn brought color back to his prince's cheeks. They had spoken through the night, yet it felt as though they had barely said anything. Two entire lifetimes needed catching up on, and it would be a very long time before the thirst for each other's company had begun to quench. 

When dawn broke golden through the prince's window, Kain stood, stretching his cramped legs. "You must be hungry. Would you like breakfast?"

"Sure. Um, there's a cafeteria close by, but..."

"We'll go back to my place. Neil's sure to come running if he smells food, and he'll be loud enough to wake the rest of the house." 

Mamoru looked up at him, his smile nervous, as if the thought of finding himself faced with his full guard was as intimidating as it was exciting. "Yeah. Let's do that."

Kain moved the chair out of the way. "Then come here."

"What?"

He chuckled, taking Mamoru by the arm. "I didn't exactly travel here by car. Now brace yourself."

"Why?"

Though he knew it would seem slightly cruel in a moment, Kain could not help the slight smirk that formed. "Because you hate this part."

He jumped without further preamble. Mamoru's panic was immediately apparent, but for Kain, it was expected. He shifted his already-firm grip on his prince's arm and pulled him close, and though no voice could travel through those breathless moments in-between, his arms spoke for him. I won't let you go.

The journey took all of a few seconds. They landed in the middle of the kitchen, Mamoru nearly toppling over at the sudden presence of floor beneath his feet. Maybe it was inappropriate for Kain to laugh as he caught him by the shoulders, but laughter seemed to come all too easily with a newly found prince in his hands. "Steady on. You okay?"

Mamoru blinked around himself at the completely altered surroundings. "Was that... did we just teleport? Just the two of us?"

"Never done that before?"

"No. Not--not like that. We always did it in groups."

Kain shook his head. "Silver Millennials. They never could get individual teleportation figured out. Too dependent on their machines to do it for them."

"You can all do that?"

"Of course. You could too. You just never wanted to."

Mamoru sank into a chair, holding his head. "I can't imagine why."

Kain patted his shoulder as he turned to the cupboard. "Give it a moment. It's a bit different from group teleportation, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It's more..." He was not sure how to finish that sentence. No word that he yet knew in the English language seemed quite capable of describing the overwhelming freefall, the compression of his lungs, the terrifying moment of disorientation like he'd been dropped into ice-cold water and had no clue where the surface was or how to reach it. 

"More everything, yeah," Kain finished helpfully. He was pulling pots and pans out of the cupboard. "Going as a group shields you a bit more. Like if you go out on the ocean, the bigger your boat, the less you feel the waves."

"How do you manage to get over that? To actually get where you're trying to go?"

"Just practice. Concentration. I'm not saying it ever becomes the most pleasant experience, but it gets a bit easier when you're used to it." He fished a heavy frying pan out of the back of the cupboard and began replacing the other pots he had pulled out. "It's always been harder for you, though."

"Why?"

He set the frying pan on the stove and opened the fridge. "When you teleport, you feel disoriented, right, like you've suddenly gone blind and don't know why?"

"Yeah." It surprised him to hear it described so accurately. Even when he had teleported with the senshi, that sensation had always bothered him. He had never told anyone, because none of them seemed to feel the same.

Kain gave him a knowing glance as he set a carton of eggs on the counter. "It's because you, more than anyone else, use the Earth beneath you to sense the world around you. It's as natural for you as the other five senses are for the rest of us. But when you teleport, for just a moment--"

"There is no Earth."

"Exactly. There's nothing. For you, that's like going blind." 

Mamoru had never had anybody tell him about himself like this before. No parents or relatives to tell embarrassing childhood stories. Nobody who remembered him as any more than a background character in their past lives. He had often listened to Luna describing the details of Serenity's life to Usagi, while his own history remained as much a sterile void as his lost childhood. 

He realized that Kain no longer had his back turned to him. He stood at the open door of the fridge with two big onions balanced neatly in his broad hand, watching Mamoru with those eyes that were still, to him, unreadable.

He stood, to distract himself. "Could I help? With um, anything?"

"Can you make coffee?"

"I make it pretty strong."

"That's perfect."

Mamoru set to work finding the coffee grounds, noting that the first cupboard he opened contained an entire shelf stuffed with instant ramen, and the shelf beneath it mostly consisted of various forms of boxed pasta-and-powdered-cheese. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the confident way that Kain cracked each egg and beat them with a fork. He was reminded of Makoto, the way she handled food brusquely and effortlessly. He did not, like Ami, tentatively reread a recipe book five times before completing each step, or, like Usagi, start and abandon five different tasks at once, panic that nothing was getting done, and either drop or burn the lot of it to make up for lost time. And apparently, unlike his housemates, his food did not involve any packages with "just add water" on the label. "So have you always been good at cooking?"

Kain shrugged as he spread bacon in the frying pan, where it began to sizzle and pop. "I guess I started pretty young. My dad and I were on our own, and he didn't cope too well with my mom being gone. I just really wanted to eat something that hadn't been frozen, so I started trying to imitate the way she used to cook."

Mamoru carefully measured coffee into the paper filter. Kain had mentioned his dad being single before, but this was the first he had heard about his mother. "That's the opposite of me. Nobody ever really cooked for me, so I guess I just never bothered. I think I used my kitchen at home for studying more than eating."

"So you don't cook at all?" 

"I can make coffee. And I can operate the rice maker."

"Wow. Next you'll be telling me you can even make toast."

"If I have a toaster. Don't ask me to operate a toaster oven." He pushed the filter into the slot and flicked on the little machine. "How did you lose your mom?"

Kain slid a plate of tortillas into the oven. "Cancer. I was eleven. Why has nobody ever cooked for you?"

The coffee maker began to make pleasant rumbling sounds. "My parents died when I was six."

"Both of them?"

"It was a car crash. I was the only survivor. It... took me a long time to figure out why I did."

Kain scooped bacon onto a paper towel, and poured the egg mixture into the greasy frying pan. "You've been on your own ever since?"

"I've had some foster families, but nothing ever stuck. I wasn't exactly a cheerful child."

In the tense moment that followed, Mamoru worried that Kain would make a fuss over his situation. But Kain gave him a glance as he moved to open the fridge again, and said, "I could cook sometimes when you move in."

"You want me to move in? With all of you?"

"If you want to. I know you're supposed to live in campus housing for your first year, but after that..." He turned on the tap, ran the water over a red pepper. "Well, think about it. I don't like the idea of you on your own without protection."

Mamoru was about to point out that he had done just fine on his own since he was fifteen, but something made him shut his mouth. Kain was offering him something he had never had. 

Whatever he was about to say next was lost behind the sound of an overenthusiastic yawn. "Goddamn you get up early. I think I have the hangover of the century." Jaden shuffled, zombie-like, into the kitchen, his hair sticking up in blond tufts, the waistband of his ragged sweatpants hanging two inches below his boxers. He wandered right past Mamoru to the fridge. "You couldn't have, like, stopped yourself from banging pots around for another hour?" He stooped and snatched up the carton of orange juice.

Next to him, Kain cleared his throat.

"I mean, it's not like I almost bled to death or anything." He took a swig directly from the carton.

"Jaden--"

"Oh shut up, I'm not putting it back in the fridge after. They give you juice when you donate blood, right?"

"Jaden."

"So I think I deserve all the juice. Also those breakfast burritos."

"Jaden."

"You need to make something when Endy gets here. Because you're the only one who can cook real food."

"Look."

"As long as it's not like, slathered in Marmite. In fact maybe we should just order pizza. Dude are you wearing the same thing you wore yesterday? You're turning into Neil."

Calmly, Kain set down the paring knife in his hand, took Jaden by the shoulder, and swiveled him around.

Two sets of blue eyes locked, and suddenly prince and guardian stood frozen. Kain discretely removed the juice from Jaden's hand before it could slip to the floor.

Mamoru tried to study his face for signs of lingering trauma, tried to focus on whether his skin was just a shade too pale and the rings under his eyes more than the result of just waking up. He tried to, but all he could see was the way that the sharp curve of his jaw would have looked so striking against his high-collared uniform. He opened his mouth to speak, but it was some seconds before any voice would come. "Are you alright?"

The blond broke into a cocky grin that brought to mind races across sun-heated fields and late-night card games amidst the sweet smell of pipe tobacco. "Come on. There is no way I'm gonna be killed by something that licks its own testicles." The comment was so unexpected that Mamoru almost forgot to laugh. "So are we supposed to hug or something, or am I expected to bow? That could get kind of awkward in public. Could we just instate some kind of royal high five or something?"

"Jadeite." Mamoru could barely croak out the word, but the sound of it, of his true name spoken by his liege, caused the smile to dissolve. He looked soberly at Mamoru, Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.

And then it was the slap of bare feet running across the kitchen floor within a fraction of a second, and Jaden's hug evoked images of tightly-coiled whirlpools. His thick hair smelled like warm morning rain.

"I thought it was you," Jaden muttered. "Goddamn, did I want it to be."

The sudden prickle of heat on his skin, like the sun emerging from behind a rain cloud, drew Mamoru's attention. Wild copper hair hung in a loose mane around Sasha's thin shoulders and filled the doorway to the kitchen. When his green eyes met Mamoru's, he dropped his gaze to the floor, playing with a thumb-hole he had ripped into the sleeve of his oversized shirt, teeth tugging at his lip ring. He approached tentatively, but his greeting was bolder than the others, pulling Mamoru down by the shoulders to kiss him below the jaw (a curious sensation with the lip ring) and squeezing his arms around his prince's neck to press burning tears into his cheek. Mamoru remembered belatedly to wrap his own arms around Sasha's--Zoisite's--ribs, and felt that he was holding something both dangerous and vulnerable.

And then a sound that could only be compared to the beginnings of an earthquake, or an oncoming stampede, shook the very ground beneath Mamoru’s feet. Sasha quickly darted from his grasp, and before Mamoru could wonder why, something giant and brown and solid as a truck slammed into him and locked him in a rib-crushing embrace. The floor rushed away from his feet and the kitchen did a twirling dance three times around his head before he went crashing onto the linoleum beneath his assailant’s heavy bulk.

Winded and dizzy, Mamoru could barely register Jaden’s laughter overhead through the thick cloud of brunette curls that had settled over his face. “Don’t crush him before you even get to say hi to him, you hairy bastard!”

Mamoru’s ear, pressed into what must have been Neil’s throat, only barely interpreted the muffled rumble offered as response. “It’s Endy! He can handle it!”

Kain’s bland voice cut through the mirth and hair. “Neil. Don’t hurt him.”

The enormous weight shifted away from Mamoru as Neil lifted himself onto his elbows. His vision was suddenly filled with nothing other than the brunette’s broad and hairy torso, mere inches from his nose, smelling like sweat and sleep. “I’ve been waiting seven hundred and sixty-three days do to this, and not even you can stop me this time, Commander Frowny-Face.”

He planted his hands on either side of Mamoru’s head, and the mass of flesh overhead gave way to Neil’s grinning face. He looked like he could barely contain himself. “Hey Endy!”

Mamoru coughed, still attempting to replace the air in his lungs. “Hi... Nephrite.”

Just when he was getting used to breathing again, the newly-established guardian grasped him by the shirt, sat him up, and squeezed him again. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you call me that, man.”

“If I had to hazard a guess, seven hundred and sixty-three days?”

“That, or my whole life, depending on how you look at it. But it could have been seven hundred and sixty-two,” he glared up at Kain, “if not for Captain Buzzkill, who by the way is a jerk and a hypocrite and probably wants you all to himself.”

“Plans change,” Kain’s voice noted dryly. Mamoru noticed that the sounds of cooking overhead had continued despite the circus show being staged in the kitchen. 

“Plans change only to benefit you. I bet you didn’t want me to tell him just so you could make it a private special moment between the two of you.”

Mamoru rubbed at his probably bruised ribs, trying to piece together what Neil was implying. It was suddenly occurring to him that a lot of time had elapsed between when he’d revealed himself to Kain and when Kain revealed himself to him. Time that was blurred behind a haze of guilt and fear of losing his friends. “Was that why you were mad yesterday? You were angry at Kain?”

“What? Yeah, of course. What, who did you think I was mad at, you?”

Mamoru stared at him. The answer must have been apparent on his face, because Neil leapt up and rounded on Kain. “Hear that? Do you hear that shit? This is why keeping secrets is a shitty thing to do. This is why we use our words like grown ups.”

The irony of Neil lecturing Kain on maturity could not have been lost on anybody, least of all the man who now glanced over his shoulder, eyeing up the brunette. “Neil, we have our prince, and I made bacon. What could possibly upset you today?”

Neil prolonged his glare, seeming to consider this carefully. He hooked his thumb in the pocket of the well-worn jeans that he had apparently thrown on with no shirt before dashing out of his room. “I am letting you off easy only because this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Do not think that you can solve all your problems with bacon.”

Sasha smirked as he helped Mamoru up. “Being more important than bacon is a big honor in Neil’s world.”

Mamoru gave him a distracted smile. Distracted, because he was in the middle of calculating something that Neil had said. Seven hundred and sixty-three days. Approximately two years. “Why two years? What happened two years ago?” He looked to Jaden, because something told him that Jaden would answer honestly, immediately, without hesitating over matters of tact.

“Huh? Oh, that. That’s how long we’ve been in Boston. Waiting for you.”

Two years. A lot happened in two years. Like watching an innocent girl nearly become the destroyer who would bring down the glaive on the world. Like suffering crippling illness as a curse consumed both his planet and body from the inside. Like being destroyed, the essence of his soul ripped from his body and nearly lost in the source of all life forever. And through all of it, grasping at the fading connection to his guardians, trying desperately to hold on to them, cursing his limited power and his inability to bring them back. They had told him often that they would be with him again, but not once had they explained why he did not need to lie awake at night, wondering what he had done to lose the closest thing he had to family before he ever knew them.

“Oh.”

He sank down into a chair. There was nothing else to say.


	5. Chapter 5

For a moment, nobody spoke. In one fell swoop, Mamoru had sucked all the excitement out of the room, and he really felt a little guilty about that, about shattering that moment of pure shared joy, but more than that, he felt an overwhelming grief that he could not quite explain. 

A black mug with a Batman logo clattered on the table in front of him. Neil set down a second beside it and poured coffee into each. "So, straight facts. We've all been back for about two years, more or less. Some of us longer than others." 

Looking up at him, or at anyone else, seemed too much for Mamoru right now, so he watched Neil's tanned hands moving over the table in front of him, scooping heaps of brown sugar into each of their coffee mugs. That was one of many culinary wonders he had introduced to Mamoru--the brown sugar. Coffee had never tasted the same since.

"Going from non-corporeal to corporeal is really shitty. You spend the first few weeks trying to figure out how to exist again. How money works, how to put your pants on, basic shit. So it's really a good thing that we got our instructions before we got thrown back into our bodies."

A spike of confusion temporarily pushed its way past Mamoru's other emotions, and he glanced up. Instructions?

Neil slid the Batman cup, now swirled with a splash of heavy cream, towards him. "See, I think there's a good reason why somewhere called Elysian got passed down in mythology as the resting place of the dead. Maybe it's just because we've got a connection there, or something. But after hanging out in rocks for however long, we got pulled in there."

Mamoru took a small sip of coffee--obscenely decadent coffee, thanks to the man who thought that bacon was a food group--as he tried to sort through what Neil was telling him. "Helios brought you back?"

The brunette slid into the chair next to him, taking a swig from his mug, which simply said the words "BIEBER FEVER!" in neon letters. "I wouldn't really say he's the one who brought us back. He's more like a... guide? He led us out. Sort of helped us wake up. He was waiting for us when we made it to Elysian. He talked to us a lot, about what we were doing and why. Why we wanted to come back. If we wanted to at all."

A silent skirmish was taking place on the other side of the table as Neil spoke. Sasha pulled out a chair and shoved Jaden down into it. He then planted the carton of juice on the table beside him, with a glare that said he could either drink the juice or wear it. Jaden's sneer said that he could wear the juice, thank you very much. Mamoru remembered belatedly that he should have reminded Jaden to take it easy, should have somehow slipped that in there in between the blissful high of rediscovering his guardians and the crushing low that he now found himself in.

But Neil's voice was warm and rich as the coffee Mamoru held between his hands, and Mamoru sank back into it. "It sounds simple, right? Who wouldn't choose life over death? But it's different, when you're on the other side of that decision. Coming back meant facing everything that happened. And living with it. It's easier to stay a rock. But you know, all of us did make the decision to come back, and that's not nothing."

It was amazing how Neil could so casually discuss life and death, reclining in the kitchen chair, barely clothed, one hand wrapped around his Bieber coffee mug, as natural as if the topic were the intricacies of hockey instead of the ultimate question. He made everything seem so deceptively simple, or he would have, if Mamoru could ignore completely the tightness in his chest when he tried to sip his coffee. If he did not notice how Jaden and Sasha hovered close by, but did not meet Mamoru's gaze. If Kain did not seem intent on keeping his back turned to every one of them.

"Choosing wasn't enough, of course. It was all we could do, but actually doing it, bringing someone back from the dead, even someone who was still tied so strongly to life, well. That's something only you can do."

"....What?"

"Well, and Sereninty, I guess." Neil shrugged. "Gotta give the girl some credit." Neil took a swig from his mug, while Mamoru's brain attempted to recover from a dizzying summersault. The brunette caught the look on his face, and laughed. "What, bro? Who else do you think would have the power, the skills, and the inclination to drag us out of our rocks? We're here because of you in more ways than one."

"But I don't... I can't..."

"Oh, you can't now. I know. You tried so many times. But that doesn't mean you won't."

Slowly, he caught up with where Neil was going with this. "You're talking about... my future self?"

Neil smiled over his coffee. "Now you're getting it. I guess there's a senshi who controls time? I never got to meet her, but I bet she's a sexy MILF."

"But why--"

Neil cut him off, his eyes dark and glistening. "Yeah, it still doesn't make sense, does it? You, future king of the world, you figure out how to bring us back. But it's not good enough for you, bringing us back in your own time. You wanted what you could have had with us before you got to be a great and powerful king. So you go back in time, you enlist the help of your priest, and you do it, but why in the hell, if you have all of time at your disposal, do you choose to bring us back when you did? And why do you send us back with the instructions that you did?"

"What instructions?"

"You had terms. Very specific terms. You told us if we wanted to do right by you, if we wanted to serve you properly this time, we were going to obey those terms, no questions asked, no matter how hard it got, no matter how wrong and even downright fucked up it seemed." 

Mamoru doubted he would have (or will have?) used those precise words, but he was too caught up by the story to be concerned about Neil's embellishments. "What were they?"

"To stay away from Tokyo. Don't come find you. Don't tell you where we are. Don't even give you reason to believe that we're out there, somewhere. When the time came, and only when the time came, would we see you again. And not in Tokyo. In Boston."

He did not know what to say. Surely he and his future self should be on the same wavelength, but he could not even begin to comprehend his own motivation, here. Did becoming king mean that he forgot all the pain and loneliness that he felt, his desperate need to have his guardians returned to him? Was Mamoru truly destined to be so callous? "Why would I say that?"

Neil stood, and retrieved the coffee pot. "Honestly? We've been asking ourselves the exact same thing for two years." He leaned over the table, topped up Mamoru's mug. “You hinted at major earth-shattering space-time paradoxes ending life as we know it if we showed up before it was time. You suggested we were doing this for you. Because you needed us to. But you never gave us a straight answer, and don’t think I didn’t put up a fight about that.

"When I first came back, I was pretty optimistic. At worst, I figured we'd wait maybe six months for you to show up. I spent a few months with my family, and then I moved straight here to wait for you. I enrolled in Harvard, because you're the fucking king of the world, and if you're coming to Boston, it's because you're going to attend one of the best damn schools on the planet." He slid back into his chair, shrugged one broad shoulder. "Hey, I got that part right."

"We all found each other, eventually. That made us think you were going to appear soon. Everything was in place. But then you didn't." Neil took a long swig from his coffee, and it somehow seemed a bit too long. Sasha was studying his nails. Jaden kept eyeing the door, like he would rather be elsewhere. The sounds of cooking from Kain's end of the kitchen had turned slow, rhythmic, deliberate. Neil took his time swallowing, and continued, his voice low. "We were prepared for it to be hard on us. We thought this was... I don't know, punishment? Retribution? Just, you know, a temporary exile. That made it okay, sort of. You never said that's what it was, but you never specified that it wasn't, because I think maybe you knew that was what it would take to keep us from breaking our word. You gave us a second chance, and this was our first test, and after breaking your trust so many times, the world would have to end before we did it again this time. But then you got sick.

"In the past, if you had given us an order like that, told us to stand by and watch you suffer and not do a damn thing, not even--not even offer some kind of comfort or be near you or tell you that you're not alone... we would have laughed in your face, man." 

Neil took a breath. A bitterness that Mamoru had never heard before crept into his voice. "You stopped calling us. Probably you were too weak to. We pushed through anyway, as much as we could. We heard you struggling to breathe. We watched you cough up blood. We watched your aura turn black. And we couldn't do a thing. And you know what? Every one of us had to be talked down at some point from jumping on a flight to Tokyo, or just... fucking trying to teleport halfway around the world and probably winding up in the ocean instead. It was a hard fucking time, okay, and if you ever start to believe that we liked sitting around here without you, then just remember that we spent every moment we possibly could watching over you then, and if Kain’s hair weren’t white before that it sure as hell would have turned that way during those few months.”

The kitchen had become uncomfortably hot, either because the oven was on or because Neil was describing, in horribly graphic detail, one of his weakest moments. Mamoru had tried to shut even Usagi out of his life when Nehellenia’s curse began to take its toll, and he thought now, for all of Neil’s perceptiveness, he was wrong about one thing. It wasn’t that he could not have called his Shitennou to him. He had chosen not to, because he never wanted any of them to see him like that.

Neil turned to the pair across the table. “Feel free to jump in any time, you know.”

Jaden looked up from a tower he had been carefully constructing out of two cups, a salt shaker, and a spoon--apparently sitting still for so long was too much even for a Jaden who was still recovering from near-mortal wounds. “I almost died. I’m exempt from all responsibility today.”

Sasha shrugged. “You’re doing such a great job on your own. I don’t want to upstage you now.”

“You’re all a bunch of pussies. I get first dibs on the bacon for this shit. Speaking of--hey! Kitchen bitch! Where the hell is my bacon?”

The temperature in the previously too warm kitchen plummeted so fast that Mamoru hugged his coffee to him, fearing it might otherwise turn into an icy frappuccino. Neil seemed entirely unbothered by this turn of events, a slow grin forming on his face as he stretched his pointedly naked broad shoulders and leaned back to bare his abs to the nearly frigid air. 

Kain did not seem to walk towards the table so much as apparate from across the room in a breath of cold mist, his eyes two slivers of ice that could have given the very sun a chill. “I didn’t quite catch that. Say that again.”

“I said, I’m going to buy you a pretty little apron to keep your pretty shirts clean while you cook me bacon. It’s going to have lace, and it’s going to say ‘kitchen bitch.’” Neil tucked his arm behind his head, aiming a hairy armpit at Kain’s face. “Now bacon me, princess.”

If it were possible for a man of Neil’s size to be wrestled out of his chair and into a headlock any faster, he likely would have at least suffered whiplash. Jaden made a noise of indignation as his carefully-constructed tower toppled after someone’s limb crashed against the edge of the table. Mamoru held his coffee even closer, fearing its loss in the midst of such chaos. 

Despite the danger to his precious caffeine, he was relieved at the brief respite. The story that Neil had told him was almost too much to process--he had gone from believing himself to be guardianless less than twelve hours ago to having four flesh-and-blood guardians whose return had been brought about by his own future self. 

That was the real curve ball. Mamoru did not know much about the king he would become, but he had to assume--had to hope, anyway--that he would still be a reasonable and understanding individual even once he ruled over the world. He must have had a reason for doing things the way that he had, as cold as it may seem. Seemingly dangling their reunion before them all, yet forcing them to keep their distance for far too long.

But now he saw that his biggest question, the why, had split into two. Why would he do that to himself? And why would he do that to them?

Neil’s gleeful laughter was so loud that Mamoru did not hear Sasha move into the chair next to him, but his warm presence brushed through the remaining chill left by Kain’s anger, which was now finding a better conduit through his fist. “It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?”

Mamoru ran a hand through his black hair. “Yes. It is.”

Sasha drew his knees up to his chest, hugging the soft flannel he wore. “Neil wasn’t exaggerating. It wasn’t always an easy time for us. Nothing ever seemed right without you here.” He tugged at the rip in his sleeve, unraveling it further. “But actually, I’m sort of glad that we had some time before we met you. You don’t know what kind of a mess we all were when we first came back.”

He looked over at Sasha, whose hair was still hanging loose and wild and seemed to flood his entire field of vision with fiery hair. “What do you mean?”

“Everything that happened. The past. The Dark Kingdom. The disappearing. Our lives ended when we were caught by the Dark Kingdom. All of our families and friends went almost a year thinking we were dead, or... worse. It was a lot to deal with. We could barely look at each other, because all we saw was a past that we didn’t want to own up to. We couldn’t function as a unit, we could barely function individually.”

“And Sasha almost set me on fire,” Jaden added helpfully.

“And I almost set Jaden on fire. I think if we’d returned to you then, if we’d tried to be Shitennou again before we were ready, it would have been a disaster for everyone. We would have fucked it up from the beginning, and probably proved to ourselves and everyone else that we aren’t good enough and never will be. I don’t know if we could have taken that again. The knowledge that we have one purpose in life and we are destined to fail at that purpose again and again.” 

Across the kitchen, Kain appeared to have brought the scuffle to a standstill. Neil was simultaneously laughing and begging for mercy. “Waiting for you gave us something to work for. It gave us a reason to rely on each other. As much as it hurt, as much as we hated it, we needed that time. That’s what you gave us. Even though it meant waiting a little longer on your own. You let us have that.” Kain and Neil were now chatting over the stove as warmly as if they had not just been attempting to beat each other senseless a moment ago. “I know it probably feels like you’re late to the party. But it’s more like, we got here early to clean up the mess we made. Get a few balloons blown up. The real party hasn’t happened yet.”

Jaden carefully placed the spoon at the top of a new tower. “This is the party. Right now. Here in our shitty kitchen.” He stifled a yawn. “Couldn’t have picked a better time of day, could you?”

Mamoru looked at Sasha, who was now contemplating his orange toenails. Could that be true? Did he do it to help them? It had never occurred to him before that being his guardians was something that could be intimidating, even frightening. It was enough for him that they were here. He’d never expected, never even hoped, for more than that. But if he considered his own role, as a prince and as one of the senshi, he knew what the weight of responsibility felt like, how crushing it could be. Given the choice, he would not wish it on anybody, especially not his own guardians.

Kain’s hand leaned against his shoulder, warm despite the ice it could create, as he set a plate on the table before Mamoru. “Eat up.”

A small knot coiled in Mamoru’s stomach surreptitiously uncoiled itself. “Thank you.”

“I hope it’s okay, I don’t know what you normally--Jaden.” Kain’s voice turned firm. “Put the screwdriver down.”

The blond meekly set the tool on the table, beside an upside-down toaster. Mamoru could not even figure out at what point he had left his seat or produced either object, but evidently the toppling tower of kitchen supplies had failed to provide adequate entertainment. “I just wanted--”

“That is not yours to take apart.”

“I know, but if I just--”

“No.”

The blond poked at the screwdriver, sending it skittering across the table. He looked so morose that, if Mamoru had a toaster to give him, he would have offered it up to be gutted in the other’s place. 

“Go get a plate,” Kain instructed, rescuing the toaster before Jaden could give in to temptation again, “and get yourself some breakfast.”

“I thought I’m not supposed to do anything today.”

“I do not want you to jump on your skateboard and wind up passed out in a ditch, no.” Kain pocketed the screwdriver, standing imposingly in the center of the kitchen. “But I think a trek across the kitchen is worth the risk, if the alternative is losing half of our appliances.”

“I’d put it together again. I know how to do that.”

“Which is precisely why we no longer have a functional blender.”

“It’s not my fault that parts went missing. They shouldn’t make them so small if they don’t want people to lose track of them.”  
Eventually, Jaden forgot any notion of taking apart appliances and retrieved some food instead. Breakfast featured what they informed Mamoru was a breakfast burrito, consisting largely of eggs, green onions, and salsa folded into a soft white tortilla; a pile of crisp bacon; fried seasoned potatoes and onions; and, because Kain did not seem to be the sort who did anything halfway, a row of sliced melon to round it off. Mamoru did not realize, until he took his first bite of burrito, that he was absolutely famished. As though the entire ordeal of the past twenty-four hours suddenly expressed itself in the desperate need to refuel, suddenly he could not stuff it into his mouth fast enough. This must have been what people were talking about when they used the words “comfort food.” Food that was warm and heavy and made you feel the same in turn, that made you forget your anxieties and fears.

It seemed like their first meal together should have been a solemn occasion. A formal one, maybe full of speeches and tears, like a wedding scene out of a movie. Here they sat instead, around an old kitchen table that was not quite big enough to seat five grown men, in various stages of undress. They clinked mugs of coffee and a carton of orange juice over mountains of bacon, Sasha and Jaden stole off of each other’s plates, Neil piled all his other food ingredients into his burrito to form a super-burrito the size of his head, and no meal had ever felt so important. Kain barely touched the meal he had prepared them, only sat back and watched, and listened to their chatter, as though taking in the moment.

Mamoru still had questions. A lot of them. He still was not entirely certain what this meant for his--for their future. He had never known what it meant to have guardians, to have a team the way that Usagi did, but now he realized that, for the first time, he had time to find out. 

“Oh.” Sudden revelation intruded on his fuzzier thoughts. He looked around the table. “I still need to tell her. Usagi and the other senshi. They’ll have to know.”

His companions unanimously sobered. All eyes turned to him with a hint of, dare he say, fear. Mamoru very much hoped that, somewhere in his hidden past, he’d developed skills in diplomacy that he could somehow draw upon in a time of desperate need. “Let’s just... take that one step at a time.”


End file.
